Alzheimer's disease is characterized by the accumulation of a 39-43 amino acid peptide termed the beta-amyloid protein or A.beta., in a fibrillar form, existing as extracellular amyloid plaques and as amyloid within the walls of cerebral blood vessels. Fibrillar A.beta. amyloid deposition in Alzheimer's disease is believed to be detrimental to the patient and eventually leads to toxicity and neuronal cell death, characteristic hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease. Accumulating evidence implicates amyloid as a major causative factor of Alzheimer's disease pathogenesis.
A variety of other human diseases also demonstrate amyloid deposition and usually involve systemic organs (i.e. organs or tissues lying outside the central nervous system), with the amyloid accumulation leading to organ dysfunction or failure. In Alzheimer's disease and "systemic" amyloid diseases, there is currently no cure or effective treatment, and the patient usually dies within 3 to 10 years from disease onset.
Much work in Alzheimer's disease has been accomplished, but little is conventionally known about compounds or agents for therapeutic regimes to arrest amyloid formation, deposition, accumulation and/or persistence that occurs in Alzheimer's disease and other amyloidoses.
New compounds or agents for therapeutic regimes to arrest or reverse amyloid formation, deposition, accumulation and/or persistence that occurs in Alzheimer's disease and other amyloidoses are therefore desperately needed.